I was walking up Bay Street yesterday when I stopped. Out of the corner of my eye I had caught a glimpse of a sculpture that I had never seen before. It is ‘Two Children of Toronto’ by Ken Lum, 2013.

Two children, a boy and a girl, sit opposite each other, some distance between them.

What you can’t see in the above picture is that there are words in bronze mounted on the wall. The words say: “Across time and space, two children of Toronto meet”. The two kids are looking towards each but not each other.

below: Both children are wearing clothes from bygone days.

below: But the boy’s clothes are more Chinese looking.

After my walk the other day, I started researching Ken Lum. I discovered that he has another sculpture nearby, and fortuitously, it was one that I took some pictures of back in December. It is “Peace Through Valour” located at the NW corner of City Hall property. Winston Churchill is standing close by.

It commemorates the 93,000 Canadians who fought in the Italian campaign of WW2 and was dedicated in June 2016. A Canadian soldier stands vigil at each corner of the memorial. The top of the 7 foot x 7 foot square is a topographical map of Ortona, a town in Italy that was a scene of a battle at Christmas time in 1943. Ortona is on the Adriatic coast and its streets were narrow which made it difficult for Allied forces to liberate the town from Nazi Germany.

Money for the sculpture was donated by the Italian-Canadian community.